THE GARDEN is my favorite escape from stress, of course, but as I have confessed before on the podcast, I sometimes succumb to the lure of swiping my way through Instagram during non-garden hours, like so many millions of us modern-day citizens.
Lately, I’ve been enjoying the short, information-packed videos from today’s guest, a gardener who goes by the screen name of Flora & Frost, and thanks to the way Instagram works, I can see that a number of my keenest garden friends also follow her. So I thought I’d invite her over to chat awhile and get to know her better.
Flora & Frost’s real name, like mine, is Margaret, and she is actually a doctor based in Minnesota. Besides having a name in common, we apparently share the inclination for going down research rabbit holes, in search of answers to all the questions that the experience of gardening and being in nature elicits in us.
Read along as you listen to the Oct. 28, 2024 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
(Dragonfly image top of page by Flora & Frost.)
garden esoterica, with flora & frost
Margaret Roach: Were you named for a grandmother Margaret as I was? [Laughter.]
Flora & Frost: Well, a grandmother and mother. I’m actually the eighth Margaret in my family, believe it or not. Yeah.
Margaret: Oh, O.K. So you see, we have all this in common. [Laughter.]
Flora & Frost: Yes. Absolutely.
Margaret: And I should say to people, because of your role as a physician, you don’t use your last name on social media, just for privacy reasons and so forth and discretion. So you’re Flora & Frost, you’re Margaret Flora & Frost.
Flora & Frost: Yes. Right. I always say, “It’s not because I’m particularly mysterious, it’s just because if someone’s Googling me, I don’t want an unhinged video of me talking about vultures to be the first thing that pops up.
Margaret: Exactly. And we will get to that vultures video. [Laughter.] So you’ve been gardening how long? You’re in Minnesota, I think you’re a Zone 4B, 5A-ish?
Flora & Frost: Correct. I’m right in a little microclimate, because we’re in Minneapolis, so the airport and everything else makes it a 5A rather than a 4B, which is everywhere surrounding us. But it gets chilly. [Laughter.] [Photo above from Flora & Frost’s garden.]
Margaret: And you’ve been at it since not that long, really? Maybe five years or so?
Flora & Frost: Yeah, about five years. It started, I think, the year before Covid, which was a nice time to get a new hobby that then I could do at home.
Margaret: Yes. Not that we were all at home or anything.
Flora & Frost: Oh my God.
Margaret: Oh my goodness. And is it ornamental, or vegetables, or some of everything, or how would you-
Flora & Frost: I do a little bit of everything and it changes each year. So last year it was a big focus on flowers. This year we had a little bit more in the way of veggies. And every year I add more and more perennials and particularly natives.
Margaret: And have you had frost yet out there?
Flora & Frost: We have not, thankfully. It’s been nice to enjoy my flowers.
Margaret: Oh, good. Good, good, good. So, for me, pretty quick, when I began gardening, which was many decades ago, I realized the biggest garden harvest of all was this endless supply of the question, “Why, why, why?” [Laughter.] It was like my curiosity became insatiable once I started hanging around outside with plants, and insects, and birds, and such. And everything I looked at or touched prompted another question. “Why, why, why, why, why?” And was that what happened to you? Because you do these videos that are sort of, as I said in the introduction, like these little journeys down the rabbit holes on particular topics.
Flora & Frost: Right. Absolutely. I got into gardening initially after finishing residency, which, as you may know, is a really intensive time, a lot of work hours. I finally got into a regular career, where I had a little bit more free time, and I had no idea what to do with myself. [Laughter.] I literally remember Googling “hobbies for adults,” because it was just so foreign to me to have this free time. And I thought, well, gardening sounds nice. It’ll get me outside, it’s something I can do with my family.
But really, the thing that has kept me with it is, yeah, this endless supply of fun facts, getting myself more connected to my surroundings, and I find that the more and more I learn about what I’m seeing, the more interested I become in it.
Margaret: Yes. And in one of your Instagram posts, you tell this anecdote about, I think they were from the 1870s, these two individuals, John and Anna Comstock. [John Comstock, above; photo from Wikimedia Commons.]
Flora & Frost: Comstock, yes.
Margaret: And I think there’s a hint in that of why you do this Instagram account. Can you relay that to us?
Flora & Frost: Absolutely.
Margaret: Yeah.
Flora & Frost: Yeah. So John and Anna Comstock were a married couple. John was a famous entomologist who was actually one of the first, or the first, entomology instructor at Cornell University. He showed up as a student and they didn’t have an entomology professor [laughter] and knew a lot about it. And so, the other students were like, “Can he just teach us?” And they allowed it, because it was the 1800s.
And he got married to one of his students, not super-scandalous, he was still young and a new instructor at the time. And both of them together did a lot of research in entomology, but Anna in particular, she was the first female professor at Cornell and did a lot of engraving work, studying insects. But she got really into teaching people about nature as a way to have them care more about their environment and be more intensive stewards of their environment.
And that’s really my intent with a lot of these videos, is I think we get so disconnected with our surroundings, even if they’re things we’re seeing every day, that I find the more I learn about them, the more I care about them. And I hope that that’s the case with other people learning about their environment as well.
Margaret: Yes. Well, I know that, for me, I’ve loved… Again, because it was so familiar to me, the experience that you’re having, and I love that you were five years into gardening and I was thinking, “Yes, yes, yes. I asked about that too then.” [Laughter.] And of course, you have many different rabbit holes you went down, but there were some that were common, and it was fun.
I think you did your first Instagram post in the fall of 2021, and now you have 96,000-plus followers.
Flora & Frost: Right.
Margaret: You have this other career, as you’ve explained, that you trained for, it’s not like you’re trying to be a social-media influencer full time or anything like that. [Laughter.]
Flora & Frost: I have been shocked by the number of people that have followed me, yes. I honestly started this account because I had a personal Instagram account that I still have for family and friends, and I found I was posting about gardening a lot. And I thought, “A lot of these people aren’t going to be super-interested in this.”
Margaret: Right.
Flora & Frost: So I started a different one, and I thought, “If they’re interested in gardening, they can follow that.” And I made it public, because I wasn’t talking about anything personal, and it has just exploded, which is mind-boggling, but I’m really glad people are enjoying it.
Margaret: Yeah. And your topics range from seed-starting tips, to American food history, to those vultures we were talking about for a second there. Speaking of birds with disgusting table manners. [Laughter.] [Turkey vulture photo from Wikimedia.]
Flora & Frost: Yeah.
Margaret: So how would you describe your genre, your main areas of interest?
Flora & Frost: It is wherever my brain is taking me at the moment, to be honest, but it started out more things in my immediate vicinity, in my garden, and I will have a question that pops into my head. This happens all the time in conversations with friends. Someone will wonder about a question and everyone will say, “Oh, yeah, that’s a good question,” but then nobody will look it up.
Margaret: Right.
Flora & Frost: And I’m like, “You know we have access to the internet, right?” [Laughter.] I’m always the one that’s like, “Well, let’s find out.” So it’s that with any question that I have that pops up. It started with my immediate vicinity, and then a lot of this is now viewers asking questions about, “Hey, I’ve always been curious about this particular topic.” Sometimes I’ll start reading about something, and that specific subject isn’t actually very interesting, but a side article becomes the focus. So it’s a rather random process, to be honest.
Margaret: Yeah. It’s fun. Like I said, ever me outside, it’s just like, “Why that? Why that? Why is that there? What’s that?”
Flora & Frost: Exactly.
Margaret: I’m just this curious person when I’m outside, even more than when I’m indoors.
Flora & Frost: Yep.
Margaret: For instance, you had a couple of pieces in different posts, a couple of pieces of seed starting advice. And one that I loved, I think it was in March this year, you say, “Stop growing seeds for the foods you wish you ate and grow what you really eat.” [Laughter.]
Flora & Frost: Right. Yes. I think so much of social media is so aspirational, it’s so cultivated, no pun intended. And I think it’s, the enemy of good is perfect, so people will grow things because they’re like, “Well, I should like this thing. I should like kale. I should eat more lettuce.” But the reality is, if you’re wanting to find a connection with your garden and enjoy it, you should be growing things that you actually like. And that’s O.K. We don’t need to gate-keep different vegetables.
Margaret: Right. You suggested potatoes, because who doesn’t like potatoes, right?
Flora & Frost: Yes. Yeah.
Margaret: Yeah.
Flora & Frost: We are enjoying some delightful homegrown potatoes these days.
Margaret: Yeah. And so, speaking of lettuce, which you just said, you have another post that’s about ‘Iceberg’ lettuce and its story, which I had never heard. I didn’t know. So tell us the brief version of the ‘Iceberg’ lettuce story.
Flora & Frost: Sure. So ‘Iceberg’ lettuce was first introduced by the Burpee Seed Company in the 1890s. And the thing that really made it revolutionary is, as you know, ‘Iceberg’ lettuce has a really high water content, it’s really crispy. And so that was the first crop, at least to my knowledge, that was shipped trans-nationally in trains that were packed with ice.
And before then, if you were in the center of the country, or if you were in a place where it wasn’t in your growing season, over the winter, you were really relying on vegetables that were canned or would store for months, and that got kind of boring. So this was the first opportunity for people to receive food from a different growing zone. And it was revolutionary in that way. It was a proof of concept for the ability to ship foods. Of course, it has become problematic in some ways [laughter], but that was the initial proof of concept of shipping things from other places.
Margaret: Right. So ‘Iceberg’ got shipped in these trucks of ice around the country, and yeah, I didn’t know that. And I didn’t even really remember how old it was, so it’s an oldie.
Flora & Frost: Yeah.
Margaret: And people disdain it now and yet, it’s a wonderful thing and it led the way in, as you said, getting things out of season from place to place and so forth.
Flora & Frost: Right.
Margaret: So that’s interesting. Also seed-starting related, you have this post about perlite. What’s perlite? Which I didn’t really know either. Can you tell us what perlite is? [Photo above from the Perlite Institute.]
Flora & Frost: That was fascinating to me. And again, that was one of those, as I’m potting up a houseplant, I’m like, “What are these little white things in potting soil?” That it never occurred to me to look into it. So that’s perlite. It’s used to make soil more light and fluffy, so if you’re potting up something that it’s not heavy and you don’t drown your roots. But I had always assumed that it was something synthetic and it’s not.
Margaret: It looks like styrofoam almost.
Flora & Frost: It looks like styrofoam, yes.
Margaret: Right.
Flora & Frost: And I learned after the fact that some cheaper soil companies will use styrofoam, which is not ideal. And basically, the way you can tell the difference is, if you press it between your fingers, if it crumbles and it’s hard, that’s perlite. If it squishes, that’s styrofoam.
Margaret: Oh.
Flora & Frost: So perlite is actually hydrated and heated obsidian, and obsidian is volcanic glass. So what happens is, this volcanic glass is made after magma cools. It starts to hydrate over time from moisture from the air, or if it’s in the bottom of a river bed, it gains water molecules over time. And then, if that is heated in a really hot oven (which obviously has to be industrial; you can’t make this at home), then it pops like popcorn. So those water molecules start to move more rapidly and expand. And because there’s no way for that glass to be flexible, it essentially pops open and creates all of these little air pockets within. So that was fascinating, I had never thought about it and then-
Margaret: Didn’t know it was obsidian, didn’t know it was volcanic glass, you know what I mean? I didn’t know. Or I didn’t remember if I did know, so that was great.
Flora & Frost: Sure.
Margaret: Yeah. And a fascination that you had, that you expressed in one of your posts about fall foliage and the colors that reveal themselves and so forth, was also one of the things I wondered about early on. And I remember investigating, “What are these non-green pigments and why does that happen?” And so forth.
Flora & Frost: Right.
Margaret: Yeah. So that’s something, like at the moment, that we’re watching reveal in front of our eyes, right?
Flora & Frost: Yes. I was investigating color changes and then, essentially, why leaves fall in the first place? Is it just they die and fall off of the tree? And it turns out there’s a much more active biological process happening, where the tree is literally cutting the leaves off.
But yeah, learning about fall color, it gives another layer of appreciation of the wonder that we’re seeing. And so, one of the things that I learned is the yellow that we see in leaves, that comes from a family of pigments called carotenoids, and they’re there all summer. It’s just that that is covered up by the fact that chlorophyll, that bright green color, is so much more visible.
Margaret: Right.
Flora & Frost: But as chlorophyll production winds down as the season changes, then that yellow starts to show through.
Margaret: Yeah, I got then completely geeky, I remember a million years ago, about the purple and reddish colors, the anthocyanins, and not just the ones that are revealed as the chlorophyll fades in the fall in some species, but the ones that certain plants that first come out of the ground in spring not green, they come out of the ground purplish or reddish-purple.
Flora & Frost: Sure.
Margaret: And for instance, a couple of natives, twinleaf, Jeffersonia diphylla, and Virginia bluebells, another native, Mertensia, a lot of non-native woodland peonies, they come out of the ground not green. And I was always like, “Why, why, why?” So yeah, all these rabbit holes. [Laughter.]
Flora & Frost: Absolutely. Well, and sometimes, my understanding is, some of those smaller baby leaves have some degree of anthocyanins for the same reason that fall leaves do, is researchers think that it probably provides some degree of sun protection for more fragile tissue. So I love that, that plants have sunscreen, too.
Margaret: Yes, and it may also deter predation from early-arising herbivores, because those pigments are not as tasty, apparently. And there’s lots of theories, so who knows?
Flora & Frost: Exactly. [Laughter.]
Margaret: I don’t know for sure. Yeah, but it’s so fun to look this stuff up and read and so forth. And like you, I love Latin plant names and what they reveal, the provenance that some of them reveal. And many times, it’s who the plant was named after. And you say you grow a lot of bee balm and Monarda, and you did a story about what that’s named after, for instance.
Flora & Frost: Right. Yes.
Margaret: Or who that’s named after. Yeah.
Flora & Frost: Nicolas Monardes. He was a Spanish physician who lived in the 1500s. And most physicians, more than a couple of hundred years ago, were physicians/botanists, because we didn’t have synthetic pharmacology at that point, and so it was people using plant remedies. So he lived in Spain. And interestingly, despite the fact that Monarda is native to North America, he never traveled to North America. He would collect a variety of plant samples from the ports in Seville, and then write about them, study them, but never actually made the trip over. [Cover of book by Monardes, above.]
Margaret: Oh.
Flora & Frost: But he was an interesting fellow. He became obsessed with tobacco, and thought that tobacco was a panacea, a cure-all, and so wrote extensively on all of the diseases that tobacco could cure. And it really gained momentum for a while, and then people were not getting better, shockingly. [Laughter.]
Margaret: I’m so surprised.
Flora & Frost: Fell out of favor at that point, but yeah, he would list a variety of contagious diseases and otherwise that could be supposedly cured by tobacco.
Margaret: Right. And then, I remember you wrote one about Amsonia, the native bluestar, another native that has a… Well, it’s actually a traveling physician, I think it was named for, you said.
Flora & Frost: Yeah. So I think he was stationary, but the traveling component was George Washington.
Margaret: Oh, O.K.
Flora & Frost: George Washington was traveling through and was ill. And so he stopped in this town and John Amson was the physician there. George Washington, apparently, and who knows if this is apocryphal or what have you, but he thought he was dying of tuberculosis. And John Amson was like, “Sir, this is a common cold.” So I thought that was just funny, because we always talk about the man flu.
Margaret: [Laughter.] Oh, you do, do you? Man flu, I see.
Flora & Frost: My husband oftentimes, he and I will have the same illness, but it presents differently.
Margaret: I see.
Flora & Frost: And so, George Washington was very concerned that he was very ill, but it indeed was just a virus and he was fine.
Margaret: So that was John Amson for whom Bluestars or Amsonia are named. That’s interesting.
Flora & Frost: Yeah.
Margaret: So those birds. You do sometimes cover birds, and there were the vultures, with their naked, featherless heads, because you’re going to stick your head into the guts of roadkill.
Flora & Frost: Right.
Margaret: Rotted, dead animals, you better not have feathers, because it’s hard to clean it off.
Flora & Frost: Exactly. Absolutely.
Margaret: Yeah. But you also did have a thing about a woodpecker, I forget which one it was. Was it downy maybe? [Downy woodpecker, above; photo from Wikimedia Commons.]
Flora & Frost: The downy woodpecker.
Margaret: And how woodpeckers are kind of built. Why don’t they get injured by banging their heads against… And this is another thing that I went down the path of years ago, I remember, trying to find out more about. So tell us a little bit about it, about the woodpecker’s special attributes.
Flora & Frost: So their physiologic structure is fascinating. So as humans, we have this free floating bone in our neck called the hyoid. And that is where our tongue is connected to. So the base of our tongue connects way down there in our throat. And these woodpeckers also have a hyoid bone, but their hyoid is in their forehead, right? So their tongue extends all the way from their forehead, around their skull, and then out of their mouth. And it’s very stretchy, so their tongue can extend quite a ways. But what scientists have found is that, when they are pecking, essentially they use their tongue and contract it to serve as a helmet.
So when you get concussions, usually it’s because the brain bounces around within the skull. It’s important for us to have extra space in the skull, because if there are changes in pressure, you don’t want to have that be lethal, and the same thing is true with woodpeckers. You want to have a little bit of extra space, but not when you are banging your head against something. And so, that tongue will contract and hold the brain in place so that they don’t injure themselves when they’re pecking. Which is just fascinating.
Margaret: I remember in, I think it was 2016, a conservationist, scientist, Stephen Shunk, I think he’s from the Pacific Northwest. He wrote the Peterson Guide to Woodpeckers that year, and I remember interviewing him. And he was telling me also that they have very little cerebrospinal fluid compared to, say, the human brain, where our brain sloshes around in our heads, and that can cause, in both directions, back and forth, boom, boom, repercussions from concussion.
Flora & Frost: Exactly.
Margaret: And that they have a whole, as he said, I think he told me it was a “suite of adaptations.” They have special ribs that other birds don’t have that have very strong muscles attached to them, so the impact in that part of the body is minimized. Woodpeckers have been studied for designs for-
Flora & Frost: Helmet design.
Margaret: Yeah, helmet design for motorcycle and football helmet, and medical research on shaken baby syndrome.
Flora & Frost: Right.
Margaret: It’s very, very interesting. They have specialized feet that they can really hold on better and to ground themselves, so to speak, and extra-stiff tail feathers, I think also, which… And you can see that if you look at one of them, a side view, a picture of one of them on a tree, their tail is really pressed into the bark. Do you know what I mean? To stabilize them further.
Flora & Frost: Yeah.
Margaret: And they have special eye… Their nictitating membrane, I think that’s the way you say it, the third or extra eyelid, it’s thicker than other birds’. They have their own goggles. They’re really-
Flora & Frost: It’s so fabulous.
Margaret: … equipped. I think it’s just incredibly cool. Oh, now I’m being crazy, sorry. [Laughter.]
Flora & Frost: You’re not being crazy. No, I love it. I love when we see designs in nature that we then try to utilize for ourselves. I did a video on dragonflies and their unique flying mechanisms, and we have tried to adapt that to military helicopters. So we’ll see all of these designs in nature that truly are incredible, and then try to get as close as possible for ourselves.
Margaret: Right. So I was just curious. So I confessed at the beginning that, there I am, swiping, looking at your stuff. And do you find inspiration sometimes on Instagram itself?
Flora & Frost: Absolutely. I love following other educational accounts, I love following more of the aesthetic gardening accounts as well. My garden is not necessarily aesthetically pleasing, it’s as chaotic as my research style [laughter]. And so, it is nice to follow other people where things are very carefully cultivated and just enjoy the diversity in gardens as well.
Margaret: So any favorite accounts you want to call out, or you’re not going to share? None of them comes to your mind?
Flora & Frost: Oh, gosh.
Margaret: I love looking at a lot of the public gardens, obviously, that… You know, for inspiration, that’s one of the things.
Flora & Frost: Yeah. I love following botanical garden accounts, and so New York Botanical Garden, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, of course the Minnesota Arboretum, have to give them their due. And a fabulous place to visit if you do live in Minnesota.
Margaret: Any other rabbit hole that you’re down at the moment? Is there any subject that you’re exploring right now?
Flora & Frost: Yes. So actually, my husband told me that I needed to try to make the Krebs cycle interesting. And I told him that is beyond my capability. [Laughter.]
Margaret: The Krebs cycle?
Flora & Frost: The Krebs cycle. So I don’t know if you remember from biology, the Krebs cycle is the cycle of cellular respiration that allows cells to generate energy, essentially. And through high school, college, med school, I had to learn it and relearn it several times. I said, “Well, I can’t make the Krebs cycle interesting, but the man who it’s named after, Hans Krebs, is very interesting.”
Margaret: Oh.
Flora & Frost: He was a German Jewish man who was on the verge of making these discoveries right at the time that Nazis came into power, and so was kicked out of Germany. And then said, “Well, no problem.” Moved to England, had all these fabulous discoveries under the British Empire, and I just love when people get consequences of their own actions.
Margaret: Yes.
Flora & Frost: So I love that he’s now known under that framework instead of that discovery happening under Nazi Germany.
Margaret: Well, fellow Margaret, aka Flora & Frost, thank you so much. And thank you for giving me a place to go and visit and distract myself from the world at the moment [laughter]-
Flora & Frost: Oh, thank you so much.
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MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 15th year in March 2024. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the Oct. 28, 2024 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).